Leaders from six Sioux groups announced today that they plan to build a massive wind farm on tribal land in South Dakota. Speaking at the annual Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in Chicago, representatives from the Cheyenne River, Oglala, Crow Creek, Rosebud, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, and Yankton Sioux tribes said that the planned development would generate between one and two gigawatts of power annually and could pour as much as $3 billion into South Dakota's economy.

The tribes plan to raise raise initial funding via a campaign on Rally.org, and will finance the rest of the project through the sale of bonds. "The Sioux Wind Project will demonstrate that community-support and community-funding can help push renewable-energy projects forward," Rally CEO Tom Serres said in a press release

Six months ago a mentally-ill young man with an AR-15 shot and killed twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. In the aftermath of the shooting, the nation was justifiably outraged. Well, I should be very clear here the vast majority of us were outraged. The NRA’s executive board, headed by Wayne LaPierre? I can’t really say what their reaction was, but it certainly wasn’t outrage. They immediately began scrambling their forces to sabotage any earnest effort to tighten up gun laws as a response to the tragedy. You would think that if anything would get our elected officials to stand up to a bunch of profiteering scumbags like the NRA’s board, it would be the nightmare of bullets and blood that ended those children’s lives. You’d be wrong though.

The NRA managed to spread a lie about the Toomey-Manchin bipartisan background check bill that it would lead to a national registry, and if there’s one thing John Q. Gun-Hoarding-Asshole can’t stand, it’s the idea of the country knowing he has a gun. Well, except for the fifteen pictures a day he posts on Facebook page, but he’s doing that voluntarily damn it! So with the gun zealots in lather over a gun registry — which the amendment specifically outlawed — just enough Republican Senators were intimidated into not backing the amendment and it died short of the 60 vote mark prescribed in the Constitution. Oh wait, no, that’s just a threshold established by obstructionist assclowns on the right. My apologies.

In the six months since the shooting at Newtown, thousands of people have died and been injured by guns, and yet the message coming out of Gun Hoarder Land is “nothing wrong here, keep moving, nothing to see.” The problem for that crowd though? There’s a lot to see. For instance, you can see that Santa Monica College just saw a dramatic and violent conclusion to a shooting rampage that started in the surrounding area and ended on the campus of the city college. You can see it in the story of a man in Arizona who brought his four-year-0ld son to a friend’s house and wound up being accidentally shot when his child found his friend’s gun and discharged it into his father. Or you can get really depressed reading a story about two shootings involving two different four year old kids in two different states in a single three-day span, does that drive home just how much a problem with guns we have this country?

No? Let’s try one more…how about twelve people being shot in six hours in Chicago?

Something’s got to give. I know we’re probably never going to get to the point where we can ask people to hand in any guns they don’t really need — you know, keep a couple for your protection and hunting purposes, and then hand over the rest of the cache — but we have to fix this issue from every angle possible. You want to talk about mental health issues? Fine, but you better be willing to move to a universal healthcare system because good luck paying for the kinds of sweeping overhauls and widely available mental healthcare facilities that are going to be needed without one. Want to enforce already existing laws better? Great! I’m all for that, but I hope you’re willing to pay higher taxes so we can hire more cops and public defenders. We also cannot be deterred in writing the kinds of common sense laws that are needed to curb the flow of guns into the black market as well as encourage responsible gun ownership. The numbers have been shouted so many times, but it bears repeating — far more people have died in this country as a result of gun crime or accident than have died in all the terrorist attacks combined.

Shouldn’t the real Department of Homeland Security be working with legislators to draft a Federal trafficking law or some other form of gun legislation that helps make tracking down illegal firearms easier? Nothing is more frustrating for me than watching America not learn from its mistakes. We can’t ban all guns, and we can’t ignore the problem and hope it goes away. The worst part about all the “scandals” that are rocking Washington right now is that they completely distract us from the issues we knew we had to fix just six months ago. Sandy Hook was and still is the wake-up call this country needs.

Yes, I’m worried about just how much we let the NSA swoop up without warrants, but while we’re hand-wringing over government programs that we all pretty much just assumed existed anyway, dozens upon dozens of our fellow Americans are dying needlessly because we can’t tell the gun lobby to go fuck themselves. If we don’t hold Congress accountable, if by next November we have simply shrugged our shoulders on the gun control issue — shame on us. Honestly, these few hundred words have been more a cathartic exercise than anything else. I’ve committed thousands of them to this cause, and the facts of the case remain the same.

The New York Times has identified the man who wrote a chilling letter describing Chinese factory conditions that was found in a box of Halloween decorations from Kmart.

The man, identified only as Mr. Zhang to protect his identity, told the Times that he was imprisoned in a labor camp where " inmates toiled seven days a week, their 15-hour days haunted by sadistic guards."

The labor camps are full of petty criminals or people who rebel against the country's religion, Mr. Zhang said. He said he wrote 20 letters over the course of two years.

One was discovered by Julie Keith of Oregon, who had bought the decorations over a year ago but decided to use them to decorate for her daughter's birthday party last October.

Inside the box, she found a plea for help supposedly written by a Chinese factory worker in Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang, The Oregonian reported at the time.

Here's an excerpt from the letter, grammatical mistakes included:

"If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persecution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.

People who work here have to work 15 hours a day without Saturday, Sunday break and any holidays. Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. Nearly no payment (10 yuan/1 month).

People who work here, suffer punishment 1-3 years averagely, but without Court Sentence (unlaw punishment). Many of them are Falun Gong practitioners, who are totally innocent people only because they have different believe to CCPG. They often suffer more punishment than others."

Americans hate terrorists and love our kids, right? So you might be shocked to know that preschoolers with guns have taken more lives so far this year than the single U.S. terrorist attack, which claimed four lives in Boston.

This is admittedly tongue-in-cheek, but one has to wonder if the NSA’s PRISM program would have saved more lives had it been monitoring toddlers – or gun owners – rather than suspected terrorists.

11 Deaths in Five Months Where Shooter Was 3 to 6 Years Old

Listed below are the 11 gun fatalities I found where a preschooler pulled the trigger (from Jan. 1 to June 9, 2013). Starting with a list of five toddler shooting deaths The Jewish Daily Forward published in early May, I unearthed six additional cases. This tragic, unthinkable event has happened every month, like clock-work.

At least 10 more toddlers have shot but not killed themselves or someone else this year (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). In the first three cases, the shooter was only 2 years old.

I also found nine instances where children and teens 7 to 19 years old accidentally killed themselves, a family member or friend since January (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

Of course, most if not all of the above deaths and injuries can be attributed to careless adult gun owners.

While this analysis focuses on children, another equally accurate headline could read: “U.S. Gun Culture Kills More Americans Than Terrorists Worldwide.”

BOSTON (CBS) – Nine years ago, Carlos Arredondo gained worldwide attention and sympathy, for being a grieving father who had a heartbreaking reaction to news that his son had been killed in the Iraq war.

Now he lives in Boston, and has found himself in the middle of the marathon bombing story. He is being both praised and questioned at the same time.

Arredondo running toward the blast and helping victims is one of the lasting images of the bombings.

“I had to to stop the bleeding, so I grabbed this sweater,” said Arredondo. “I ripped it apart and wrapped to stop the bleeding on his limbs.”

It was the reaction from the same man, who was once so broken by grief in 2004, that he set himself and a Marine Corps van on fire after hearing that his young son Alex had been killed in Iraq. Years later, his other son committed suicide. On Wednesday, two days after the marathon attack, his story took another twist.

He says Boston Police and the FBI came to his Roslindale home and questioned him about the bombing. When they left, they took some items.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama hosted Republican senators at the White House Wednesday evening, with dinner conversation including the deficit, gun control and immigration.

A White House official characterized their discussion over steak and sautéed vegetables as constructive and wide ranging, including all three of the pressing issues at the top of the president's agenda. Their dinner came on the same day that Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget proposal and on the eve of a debate over gun legislation on the Senate floor.

The Senate voted to move forward on gun control Thursday, clearing the first of what is expected to be many 60-vote hurdles for the legislation.

In a 68-31 vote, the Senate approved a procedural motion that will allow debate on the Democratic measure to begin. Sixty votes were required for approval.
Sixteen Republicans voted in favor of the motion, while two Democrats — both from states President Obama lost in the 2012 election — voted against it. The two Democrats were Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska) and Mark Pryor (Ark.), both of whom face reelection next year.

Federal officials discovered Tuesday a poison-laced letter sent to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), uncovering the material at an off-site location where congressional mail has been screened since anthrax-laced letters were sent to Capitol Hill in 2001.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and other senators exiting an FBI briefing on the Boston attacks, told reporters that the letter was tested at the facility and came up positive for ricin. Officials gave no indication why the letter was sent to Wicker, a low-profile senator in his second term.